Washington Coast

Over Labor Day weekend Jeff and I took our much talked about trip to the Washington Coast. We had been talking about doing this for years and finally decided to go ahead and do it. We brought along Remmy (this was his first road trip) who had a blast as you can see. This was his first time seeing the ocean and Jeff was teaching him how to run at the waves as they receded and how to run from them as they washed up on shore. It wasn't long before he caught onto the game and decided that he loved the ocean. It also worked out that no one was on the beach so he could run and explore as much as he wanted.

We spent the night at the Hoh River Rain Forest which you'll see pictures of below. It's absolutely gorgeous. And the next day we took Remmy to the river to play. He's not too keen on water but we kept throwing in sticks and he was slowly getting farther from the shore to go get them. We tried exercising him as much as possible since he wasn't aloud to hike in the rain forest with us and since we had spent a lot of time in the car. At the end of this trip I think it's the first time I've seen him worn out since he was a puppy. He sat in the back seat of the car slightly catatonic and drooling.

This is part of the Rain Forest. It's one of the few temperate rainforests in the world and one of the largest. These trees had fallen down on their own and so they created this cool trail out of them. This is a place I think everyone should see in their lives. It is so beautiful and so close if you live in Washington. No matter what time of year you go it's going to be damp so dress in layers. And just as an FYI dogs aren't aloud on the trail. We camped here as I said and so we hit the trail early and pretty much had the place to ourselves. I can't say what it would be like on a busy day but I think it's a perfect family trip especially if you do the coast afterwards.

There were many trees like this in the forest. They are created by nurse logs. Trees fall over and begin to decay and other trees begin to grow out of the logs. Eventually their roots take over the tree and it develops this really intricate above ground root system. It was so amazing to me how the forest sustains itself.

This tree was one of many in whats call the "Hall of Mosses". This trail is a must in the forest, everything is green and you feel tiny because these enormous trees are dropping over you with moss. The amazing thing is that you can go on a different trail and you don't really see the moss. The forest is really diverse so it's not like you are walking and seeing the same thing over again on a different trail.

This was our camp site. One of the things we enjoyed the most about camping in the rainforest was that it wasn't very crowded. We passed many camp sites along the way that had a lot more people in them, but the rainforest is about a 20 min drive off of the highway so that's probably why there weren't as many people. We set up underneath a tree so we didn't have to worry about rain and it was really peaceful. The one drawback about this site is that there were no showers, however there were toilets and a place where you could get fresh water. But we didn't really plan this trip around civilization. It was really nice to just explore a bit of the state without a lot of people around. I know that there are places like this all over so I would encourage all of you to explore your state a little, it's a cheap easy way to have a mini vacation.